Juckes and the Divergence Problem

Juckes discusses the Divergence Problem as follows:

Particular concerns have been raised about … the high latitude Eurasian trees (which have and anomalously low growth anomaly in the late 20th century — Tornetraesk, Fennoscandia, Yamal, Northern Urals in Table 1)

No one has ever said that Yamal has an anomalously low growth anomaly in the late 20th century. Or the Northern Urals. Or for that matter, Tornaetrask or Fennoscandia – which are the same site, just different names.

What critics have observed and Juckes doesn’t discuss is that the average of 387 “temperature-sensitive” sites goes down in the last half of the 20th century (the Divergence Problem). But within the population of 387 sites, you can find some that go up. And surprise, surprise, the Team chooses them over and over. Tornetrask is used in every study. Juckes has taken cherry picking to a new height by even using it twice (Tornetrask and Fennoscandia, well disguised by the use of different lat/longs.)

Since Juckes has elected to use the “old” chronologies, it’s worth re-visiting an earlier post on how Briffa dealt with the divergence problem in the Tornetrask MXD chronology which is one of the two Tornetrask chronologies used by Juckes. It’s discussed here over a year ago. It contains an explanation of the following diagram:

What are these people thinking? “Anomolously low growth”??? Why won’t they admit that their assumptions WRT to ring growth might be wrong? Must be, because I’m pretty sure these trees will be obeying the laws of physics, chemistry and biology! This is at least as bad as the suggestion that when the model doesn’t match real-world data, it’s the real-world data that is wrong. Sheesh!

I’ve added some diagrams showing the “anomalously low growth” at Yamal and Briffa’s “adjustment” at Tornetrask with a link to an earlier post explaining the adjustment. While you’re at it, don’t forget to review how Briffa dealt with the Divergence Problem for the IPCC 3AR spaghetti graph discussed here http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=194 Follow the link at the bottom for details.